Reasons
by Aromene
Summary: Response to LJ Challenge 'The Real Reason Blank Came to Atlantis'. What brought Bates and Radek to Atlantis from wherever they were?
1. Don't Question

**Disclaimer: Still not mine. I keep waiting though. **

AN: This is a reply to **sgatlantislight****'s challenge posted at ****rodneymckay**** asking for stories about the real reasons the characters came to Atlantis and not just "they were the best and brightest or had the gene".**

**First up: Bates

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**Don't Question**

Bates had pretty much learned from day one not to ask questions. Questions led to trouble. Trouble was bad in the military or anywhere else.

And so, when he and a few of his fellow marines had been taken off their respective SG teams and 'asked', which was just a nice way of being told really, that they were being reassigned somewhere Much Better, Bates hadn't said a word. He'd nodded, accepted the assignment and spent the next week in meetings and presentations with a few dozen other marines. That they were being deployed to another galaxy hadn't really fazed any of them. That they were being deployed there in order to protect an expedition of civilian scientists hadn't gone over nearly as well. Bates knew he should have seen the warning signs when his commanders had promised it was a 'step up in the world'. Because they only said things like that when they were sending you off on glorified suicide missions or any number of other crap-ass assignments.

But as cushy jobs went, this had to take the cake, and because Bates had learned not to question, he only complained to his fellow marines, and then less than most of them.

Besides, he was a marine; he could handle anything calm, coolly and with a personality that had won him no awards and a whole boatload of enemies. Like he cared.

But of course, because Murphy hated the Marines about as much as he hated everyone else, it wasn't the frakked up vampires or the near drowning in a sunken city or even, really, the scientists (though he was silently contemplating ways to kill Dr. McKay and make it look like an accident - never let it be said marines are not creative); rather it was losing his commander day one and suddenly finding that the person in charge was a) Air Force and b) followed his own damn rules and to hell with anyone under his command. Sumner knew the marines, got along well with Bates, and Bates had had to admit, even if it had only been a few weeks, that the man was a good commander. Sheppard was the total, complete _opposite_ and it rankled Bates in ways he could never have imagine. But no questions also meant no complaints to anyone higher than himself and so Bates took it like a marine is supposed to take things and followed Sheppard's commands like he'd followed Sumner's.

But damn it had felt good to stare Weir right in the face and disobey her order because he had to follow Sheppard's and it was the first time that Bates realized that Sheppard wasn't all that different from Sumner, because Sumner would never have lain down and taken it either.


	2. Last Winter in Prague

**Disclaimer: Still not mine. I keep waiting though. **

AN: This is a reply to **sgatlantislight****'s challenge posted at ****rodneymckay**** asking for stories about the real reasons the characters came to Atlantis and not just "they were the best and brightest or had the gene".**

**Second up: Radek, because really, who can pass that up?

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**Last Winter in Prague**

Radek had been six years old when the Soviet's invaded his homeland. He doesn't remember much of it except that things were bad and his mother was frightened all the time.

He remembers the Revolution much better, but he was not there when it happened and so he knows about it mostly from his family and a little from the news that did filter through to the rest of the world.

He caught a flight home as soon as he could. It was cold and snowing and he wasn't surprised at either when he got off the plane, but no one in the entire country could have cared less what the weather was doing.

After that he never really planned to leave again. He figured he'd stay and work and marry and not have children and he'd be content, if not happy. Work was not hard to come by, not when he was both an engineer and a physicist when the mood (or the work) suited. He was smart and well educated and his country was rebuilding.

It lasted for a decade. And then he realized that being at the top was not necessarily always a good thing, because it meant other people started to notice. He spent his last winter in Prague before he left the Czech Republic for good. At the dawn of the new millennium he was on a plane to the US for this first time in his life, with the promise of amazing work and colleagues smarter than he was.

The work was amazing. The colleagues were not. They closeted him away in Area 51 for 2 years before he was even allowed to see the sunshine. When they extended the offer of a one-year contract placement on an expedition that was going somewhere he didn't have security clearance to be told, they didn't even have to finish the sales pitch before he was signing up. Because no matter how interesting the work was, he would be the first to admit he was uninterested in everything that came with it.

He had never expected Atlantis. Never dreamed that such a thing was possible. But it was both amazing work and there were colleagues that he understood, even if he didn't always like them.

His verdict was still out on Dr. McKay, though.


End file.
